Can you imagine the kind of pressure a reelected Obama will put on Israel, the kind of anxiety he will induce from Georgia to the Persian Gulf, the nervousness among our most loyal East European friends who, having been left out on a limb by Obama once before, are now wondering what new flexibility Obama will show Putin — the man who famously proclaimed that the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century was Russia’s loss of its Soviet empire?

They don’t know. We don’t know. We didn’t even know this was coming — until the mic was left open. Only Putin was to know. “I will transmit this information to Vladimir,” Medvedev assured Obama.

Of course, the American people would never know...and that's the point.

And of course the press, seen here hiding behind a posed 'Palestinian' protester. As you know, people tend to act out more when the cameras are on them, so what we're really seeing is the press inciting violence. That shot will probably make the EU newspapers and websites:

The IDF and Israel Police went on high alert Friday, imposing a full closure on the West Bank, limiting access to the Temple Mount and setting up checkpoints on roads near the Lebanese border ahead of expected protests marking Land Day and the Global March to Jerusalem.

Protests were taking place across the West Bank in Kalandiya, Bethlehem, Hebron, Nabi Saleh, Budrus and other villages. Israeli media reported that IDF troops fired warning shots toward protesters in the Gaza Strip who approached the closed Erez Crossing.

At the Kalandiya checkpoint Palestinian protesters were clashing with Israeli forces, throwing rocks, firebombs and burning tires. Security forces were using large amounts of tear gas, stun grenades, sound weapons and foul-smelling water to disperse the protesters.

I object to the word 'protesters' in this case, which shows you how far the Jerusalem Post has fallen from its former standards.Rioters is the proper term.

Ask yourself...what kind of parent would take a child of theirs into the middle of a violent riot? What kind of parent would smilingly teach him this kind of hatred?

The official purpose today was to violently penetrate Israel's borders and 'reconquer' Jerusalem.

The unofficial purpose is best expressed by Noah Pollack, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel.

“GMJ uses the same PR tactic that has become standard for all the terrorist groups who attack Israel. They want to put the Israelis in a situation where they have to kill people. Hamas, Hezbollah, GMJ—it’s all the same strategy: force the IDF to kill people, get it on video, kick back and enjoy the media furor.”

Which explains why the child was there in front of the cameras.

Even more revealing are some of the anti-Semitic jackals in the west who are staunchly supporting today's festivities, including Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky and Cornell West, Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I understand why the Israelis don't use live fire on the rioters, but as Napoleon once observed while dealing with mobs in Paris while still a general, a response like a volley of warning shots that doesn't exact severe casualties only makes the mobs bolder and just leads to more carnage and loss of life once a forceful response is required.

I'll say again what I've said for over a decade now. There is no 'two-state solution'. The 'Palestinians' have made sure of that ever since Yitzhak Rabin and Israel's Labor government foolishly listened to Bill Clinton and let Yasser Arafat bring his murderous thugs in form Tunis and take over.

Nor is there a 'peace process'...not with these people. The solution for Israel is to annex the areas in Judea and Samaria it wants as its borders,guard and protect those borders, expel every Arab non-Israeli citizen within Israel to the other side of that border and move any Jews outside the border back to Israeli territory.

They then need to cut off all contact with the Arab occupied areas of Gaza, Judea and Samaria and inform the people who refer to themselves as 'Palestinians' that any attacks on Israel's sovereign territory will be treated as an act of war and dealt with as such. The usual suspects in the media would go crazy for a couple of weeks, but after that, the caravan would move on, even though some of the dogs would continue to bark.

Telling Hamas that the next rocket or mortar shell fired at Israel's civilians from Gaza would lead to a no-holds-barred full on war might just have more of a deterrent effect than the occasional pinpoint raids.

But really the message, the important one, concerns us, here in America. It is that the American people can't be trusted if the president is honest with them about what he proposes. More bluntly, that the American people are not trusted by their own president. Otherwise the president would tell us the truth about his intentions. And here he is, admitting his distrust of his own people to a leader of a nasty foreign government that seeks to thwart our purposes in the Middle East and elsewhere. President Obama is in cahoots with the Russian regime against America's very body politic....Where is an open mic when we need one? It is ironic that this president, who is committed to the programmatic pacification of Russian anxiety about defensive nuclear policy, has wasted more than three years in trying to talk with the regime of the ayatollahs about its craving for an offensive atomic capability. More likely than not, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are already embarked on a scientific campaign to match Tehran's not-all-that-hidden military accomplishments and ambitions. When these come close to maturing, President Obama's cares about Russian missile anxieties will mean less than nothing.

Instead, Mr. Obama has invited Mr. Putin to meet in Washington shortly after his inauguration in May to discuss an agenda that Mr. Obama says will include a new agreement on reducing nuclear weapons. His lobbyists are pressing hard, meanwhile, for the repeal of a 1974 law limiting trade with Russia while resisting a congressional proposal, supported by many Democrats, that would tie the repeal to a new law punishing Russian human rights abusers. Last month Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Moscow’s obstruction of action by the U.N. Security Council on Syria was “just despicable.” Yet last week the Obama administration agreed to support what amounts to Russia’s plan for keeping the Assad regime in power, by dispatching a U.N. envoy to broker peace. Mr. Obama’s assurance to Mr. Medvedev, meanwhile, has raised a reasonable question: What “flexibility” will Mr. Obama be prepared to offer on missile defense, given that Mr. Putin surely will not be satisfied with anything short of scrapping the system or giving Russia a veto over its use? Mr. Obama said Tuesday that “at a time of great challenges around the world, cooperation between the United States and Russia is absolutely critical to world peace and stability.” But that cooperation — and progress on Mr. Obama’s priority of more nuclear arms reductions — should not come at the expense of U.S. defense and security interests. Moreover, Mr. Obama would be foolish to center his policy on an autocrat whose people are clamoring for democratic change. Has nothing been learned from the Arab Spring?

A couple of readers have compared President Obama’s live-microphone remark about flexibility after the election to the Etch A Sketch line from Mitt Romney’s political adviser, and wondered why I came down harder on the latter than the former. ... There are, to my mind, vast differences between what Mr. Obama said and the suggestion by Mr. Romney’s adviser that Mr. Romney can simply shake the Etch A Sketch if he gets the nomination, erase all of the loony right-wing tunes he’s been singing all year and change his positions to more moderate ones. Mr. Obama is not suggesting any change in position. He has been working for desperately needed reductions in nuclear arms for years. Russia is the only relevant country to talk to about that, and it is in Russia’s interest to reduce nuclear arms stockpiles, just as it is in the interest of the United States.

To Rosenthal (and I would assume to many of his fellow editors at the New York Times) a statement made about political expediency by an adviser to a candidate is worse than that a statement of contempt by the President to a rival head of state about the people who elected him (and he hopes will elect him again.) To quote Frasier Crane, "Tell me, what color is the sky in your world?"

The American Jewish community is facing a crisis, one that has made the red lines of Jewish identity blurry and led to the "big tent" debate - in other words, the perceived Jewish need to accept everyone in the name of being open and pluralistic. Of course, such well meaning individuals who have made Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) a religion would not dare "occupy" another people, ergo, Israeli policies are bad. Despite the above, the Zionist enterprise of 2012 is alive and well - not perfect but indeed thriving, as illustrated in Start Up Nation. The so-called crisis is only in the minds of Beinart, JStreet and its followers, who feel uncomfortable with the measures Israel has to take in order to ensure its survival. The failure among such "open minded" Jews to understand the damage they do to the historical Zionist narrative by adopting the Palestinian one will only prolong the "occupation," rather than end it.

That is why the Israeli peacenik left collapsed and Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister. It wasn’t that Israel had moved to the right but that reality had done so. Thus, the problem of American liberal Jews is not to save Israel from reactionary religious extremists and hardline rightists but to come to terms with the views of the majority of Israelis, the centrists and those left of center. ... Along the lines of their thinking we would have to rewrite the Haggadah along these lines: “For we have not merely projected our paranoiac thinking that just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but we’ve been so overwhelmed with irrational fear that we think in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; even though they are just standing around doing nothing except occasional texting and discussing the big game on television last night. But fortunately the left-wing critics, blessed be They, verbally attack us, help our enemies, and launch boycotts against us which save us from our own stupidity.”

Nathan Guttman has written an apology for J-Street in the Forward. Guttman never writes that J-Street has become irrelevant but he reports:

The crowd gave only muted applause to comments touting the administration’s positions on the Middle East, Iran and the Palestinian issue. But the audience offered a lengthy standing ovation to Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett when she trumpeted the president’s health reform plan. Her mention of women’s rights to birth control brought the J Street delegates to their feet.

At the J-Street convention the crowd was more interested in reproductive rights than they were in the Middle East!

3) Ain't no way to treat an ally

A number of sources have picked up on a campaign to undermine Israeli efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Most pro-Israel president evuh: “We’re trying to make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel,” said an administration official… he suggested that any Israeli strike on Iran before international oil and gas sanctions take effect this summer would undermine the tenuous unity the United States and its allies have built to oppose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Privately, White House officials say the coalition would explode with the first Israeli airstrike.

Iran now has a decent picture of what Israel’s and America’s intelligence communities know about Tehran’s nuclear program and defense establishment, including its aerial defenses.

The Iranians now know about the indications that would be perceived by Washington and Jerusalem as a “nuclear breakthrough”. Hence, Iran can do a better job of concealment.

The reports make it more difficult to utilize certain operational options. These options, even if not considered thus far, could have been used by the US in the future, should Iran not thwart them via diplomatic and military means.

Needless to say, this is not how one should be treating an ally, even if this is a relationship between a superpower and a satellite state. The targeted assassination campaign currently undertaken by the US government also sharply contradicts President Obama’s declaration at the AIPAC Conference, whereby he and the US recognize Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself by itself. One cannot utter these words and a moment later exposes Israel’s vulnerabilities and possible strike routes to its enemies.

It’s also at odds with Obama’s belief, stated at AIPAC this month, that Israel has the “sovereign right” to “defend itself, by itself.” The leaking campaign provides Iran with too many details about America’s capabilities — weakening Obama’s (or a future president’s) ability to fulfill his promise to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon by using “all options on the table.”

have shown how the administration (or elements within the administration) have been working against Israel through selective leaks.

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up!

This week was an important one in the history of our beloved Republic. The Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments for a ruling they'll make in June or so on ObamaCare's constitutionality. It will determine whether the tide of Big Government continues sweeping our freedoms before it or whether the turning of the tide has started.

President Obama's solicitor general, Donald B. Verrilli Jr. also said the case should move forward, saying, “This case presents issues of great moment, and the Anti-Injunction Act does not bar the court’s consideration of those issues.”

He also argued that the penalties in ObamaCare aren't a tax, which is interesting because one of his main defenses for the individual mandate is that it's legal and constitutional because - wait for it - it falls under congress's authority to levy taxes!

Justice Scalia as usual was quick to see the innate hypocrisy: “Today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you will be back and arguing that the penalty is a tax.”

The individual mandate,the vile heart of ObamaCare is scheduled for arguments tomorrow, and as Justice Scalia pointed out, that's exactly the position Verrilli is going to be in.

Where might the Court ultimately go on this?

They could certainly uphold the law as written, ruling that Congress had the power to enact this law, no matter how the public feels about it. This would endorse the continued distortion of the Commerce Clause and uphold the individual mandate as part of Congress’s power to impose taxes. The court would basically be telling the American people that elections have consequences and that the remedy is to vote out the lawmakers if you want an unpopular law repealed.

Another possibility is that the SCOTUS could find the individual mandate unconstitutional and thus overturn the entire law because the statute doesn’t have a “severability clause” — standard language the Democrats somehow forgot to include that says if one part of the law is overturned, the rest of it is still in force.To me, that would be an absolutely hilarious and appropriate finish. As then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said, "You have to read the bill to see what's in it."

In our non-Council category, the winner was an old Watcher's Council favorite, Sultan Knish with It Doesn't Matter If You're Black or White submitted by The Noisy Room. It's a refreshingly honest look at the race issues surfacing in the Treyvon Martin case. Definitely give it a look.

Here are this week’s full results.Only New Zeal was unable to vote this week, but was not affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Congress voted today on what President Obama called his 'budget', a menage of outlandish spending and tax increases that made no attempt to embrace reality..and it failed miserably 414-0. Not a single Democrat was willing to hold their nose and vote for it.

A second even more outlandish budget proposal sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus that called for an additional $4 trillion in tax increases and vast increases in domestic spending beyond even what President Obama proposed also went down to defeat 314-107, although the usual suspects voted for it.

What finally passed, 228-191 was Paul Ryan's budget. Admittedly,it hasn't got a prayer of passing the Democrat dominated Senate but at least it's out there as a blueprint for fiscal sanity.

"We are ceding our sovereignty and our ability to control our own destiny as a country when we have to hope that other countries will lend us money," Ryan said Wednesday. "We've got to get this under control."

"If we don't tackle these debt problems soon, they're going to tackle us as a country."

Ryan's budget slashes $5 trillion more than President Obama's proposal, reduces spending in 2013 and 2014 compared to 2012, and revives his proposal last year about turning Medicare into a health insurance supplement program for anyone younger than 55.

Below, you can see Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's brainless screed about how Rep. Ryna's proposal is going to kill medicare..and Ryan's response, reminding her that it was the she voted for Obamacare, a bill that purloined half a trillion dollars from Medicare at the expense of seniors to fund it.

As the Supreme court debates the constitutionality of forcing Americans to buy a product from a private company and forcing companies to sell to anyone whom applies, a great many arguments have been advanced for universal, government mandated healthcare.

The most frequent one, cited by the Obama Administration's solicitor general and a great many talking heads on the Left involves the idea that the key to controlling rising costs involves forcing people into the insurance market, because those 'free riders', mostly identified as 'young people' who don't buy insurance and force the cost up for everyone.

To help you cut through the verbiage and the nonsense, here's a simple test; if the person you're listening to doesn't include these four words as the main source of the problem of rising health care costs,you're listening to dishonest drivel.

The four words? Illegal aliens. Tort reform.

Let's examine what happens when a construction worker or busboy whose immigration status is,shall we say,not legal or a member of his family gets injured. And injured can mean anything from a broken arm to a case of the flu.

Assuming they haven't managed to get on the MedicAid rolls,they simply go to the nearest emergency room for treatment.

They get treated, because the hospitals are legally mandated not to turn them away (nor should they, out of common humanity). There's a brief conversation with the hospital admin staff about payment, a few smiles and shrugs and the hospital eats the cost. Which gets passed on to the rest of us as higher taxes and higher premiums, as hospitals attempt to balance the budget and raise costs to try and break even.

In my home city, ER rooms are closing and one facility that had been serving the urban community for years actually closed down because this scenario had become so common they simply couldn't afford to run anymore.

The Obama Administration isn't going to be honest with you about that, for political reasons, and would rather refer to a vague 'estimated 40 million Americans without health care', up sharply from an 'estimated 30 million' less than a year ago. But until the problem of illegal migration gets solved, even universal healthcare for every American citizen isn't going to lower costs.

Of course, we could ensure all non-citizens,legal or not. But that's simply another way to go broke as people flock across the border for this latest freebie.You see,there's an unlimited demand for free stuff.

Then,we have the other two words 'tort reform'.

The thing health professionals fear more than a stage five outbreak of a communicable disease is predatory lawyers.

We're not talking here about legitimate cases of blatant misdiagnosis or error, things like a surgeon leaving a sponge inside a patient after an operation or a doctor amputating the wrong body part. We're talking about lawyers ginning up things like large class action suits ( a John Edwards specialty)on the most spurious of causes, actively soliciting people mildly hurt in accidents or worker's comp cases to go to a doctor in cahoots with the lawyer to get unneeded treatment to 'build up the medical' for a settlement, and actively seeking out people who had no intention of engaging in legalities to encourage them to start tort suits on contingency against medical professionals, promising them a gold mine at the end of the trail.

How do these activities impact what you pay for healthcare? In many ways. The financial success of these legal tactics has meany a huge payday for lawyers at the expense of insurance companies. Like any other business,they pass on the cost to their customers.The premiums for health insurance increase, as do the premiums for malpractice insurance for medical professionals. In an effort to try and keep their costs down and avoid court,hospitals and medical professionals frequently perform tests and procedures that are largely unnecessary just on the off chance that some legal shark might use it as a loophole.It all costs money,which eventually winds up hitting the ultimate consumer, you, in the wallet.

Right now, the entire field of tort lawsuits is like a goldrush for anyone with a law degree. Unless limits are put on when tort suits can be filed and for what and unless the abuses are curbed, health care costs are going to continue to rise.With the added problem that as costs for tuition and things like malpractice insurance skyrocket,less and less people are going to find the healthcare professions attractive.

President Obama has never once let the words 'tort reform' cross his lips, and neith have the Democrat leaders who shoved ObamaCare through. It's a safe bet that the trial lawyer's associations are among the biggest Democrat donors have a great deal to do about that.

One final point...a great deal is made over people with pre-existing conditions who can't get healthcare insurance,and that's also been given as a reason to tear apart what is by and large a successful system.

Let's look at how that particular problem gets solved in a slightly different context.

In my home state, insurance or a cash bond posted with the state Department of Motor Vehicles is necessary if you wish to drive a vehicle.

Some people, because of their driving records, a pre-existing condition, are not desirable customers for insurance companies, who would just as soon turn them down and let them be some other company's problem.Recognizing this,and recognizing that these people still needed to be insured in order to comply with the law, what the state insurance commission did was to set up an assigned risk pool of these drivers require that insurance be written, and deal them out to the various companies. The end result is that anyone who drives who wants to be insured ends up being able to be insured.

As a final note, two strategies that have been mentioned that would cut the cost of healthcare significant are cracking down on medicare fraud and opening up the insurance market to interstate competition.

ObamaCare was never really a healthcare bill. It was always about increasing taxes and government control of one sixth of the economy.

You now have some idea of what a serious proposal to get the cost of healthcare under control ought to deal with. Anything else is sheer bolshoi, especially when it's hidden in a 2000 plus page piece of legislation no Democrat in Congress bothered to read before they voted it in.

I note that the former foreign minister under Ehud Olmert and the leader of Israel's Kadima Party, Tzipi Livni, has been resoundingly defeated in the Kadima primary. The new head of Kadima is Shaul Mofaz, a former Defense Minister and Army chief of staff.

Mofaz garnered between 64.5 and 65% of the vote, with Livni getting the rest. it's an extremely fitting result for the career of the egotistical drama queen of Israeli politics.

To give you an idea of how much Livni is disliked personally even by people that agree with many of her views,bear in mind that in the last election Kadima actually won the most seats, although not enough to govern.

As is customary,Israel's president polled the leaders of the other parties to see whether any of them were willing to form a governing coalition with Kadima and endorse Livni for prime minister - and none of them would,not even Labor or Meretz.

Mofaz has reached out to her and asked her to stay in Kadima, which is probably a huge mistake on his part, since she will probably accept once she gets her emotions under control.

And while Mofaz,an ex-Likudnik is a bit more to the right than Livni,I wouldn't count on seeing Kadima enter the Likud governing coalition any time soon.

Some of you thought I was reaching a little bit when I suggested yesterday that the Obama Administration may have decided to throw the fight and let the Supreme Court overturn ObamaCare to help win the election. Well, look what crawled out of the woodwork...two very well connected and informed Democrats that feel exactly the same way:

Neither of them is saying that President Obama is deliberately letting ObamaCare go down in flames - just pointing out the benefits.

I'll repeat the scenario I mentioned yesterday... ObamaCare's repealed,and President Obama is able to jettison a markedly unpopular issue that's been a major rallying point for Republicans while giving him the issue of saying how he'll fix healthcare during his next term.

Employers start hiring, especially small businesses now that they don't have ObamaCare staring them in the face. Unemployment drops, the Dow goes up,the president can say his 'policies' are working. The American people get gulled into thinking things are headed in the right direction, Obama gets re-elected..and then is free to proceed in destroying America and its economy without fear of any electoral consequences. Even better,he gets a chance at nominating at least two more Supreme Court justices with the radical viewpoints and ideology similar to those he's already nominated, so that the changes he makes stay that way.

Crazy, yes. But stranger things have happened since Barack Obama slithered into the Oval Office.

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won't be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category, and return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week.

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Left leaning CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin listened to the arguments and the questions from the justices and called today "a trainwreck for the Obama Administration. All of the predictions, including mine, that the Justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong."

You can literally hear the panic and shock in his voice.

Justice Kennedy in particular looks very promising on this one. This is also the second account I've seen saying that Paul Clement, the attorney representing the plaintiffs challenging ObamaCare was outstanding, and that U.S. Solicitor general Donald Verrilli was unprepared and absolutely awful when it came to answering the justices' questions.

Color me very cautiously optimistic.

But here's something to consider. Let's suppose, just for giggles that the president and his campaign have decided to deliberately throw ObamaCare under the bus to help his re-election?

The bill, especially the individual mandate is unpopular in an almost biblical sense, with almost two thirds of the American people. It doesn't poll well, it's a signature rallying cry for Republicans and it's the last thing President Obama wants to campaign on.

So what if - wait for it - President Obama deliberately decided to throw this particular fight? It takes away a major issue from Republicans, causes the Dow and the GDP to rise almost overnight and helps jobs and the economy as employers start hiring again now that they know they no longer have the specter of ObamaCare hanging over them.

The economy improves, things seem to be going on the right track and what do you know? The president is re-elected.After which he can continue destroying the country unimpeded by any worries about another election.Or at least,that might be the plan that's been cooked up.

Insane scenario? Well,crazier things have happened,haven't they?....I mean, did you ever think we'd have a totally unvetted president of Barack Obama's character and extreme views in the White House?

You may recall the case of Menachem Zivotofsky, a child who was born in a hospital in West Jerusalem and whose parents wanted to list Jerusalem, Israel as his birthplace.

When his parents, Ari and Naomi Zivotofsky, went to U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to apply for a passport for their son and asked that his country of birth be listed as Israel. The embassy refused, citing State Department policy that such passports list only 'Jerusalem,' with no country added.

So they sued.

Congress had already made a law permitting this in 2002, the same year Menachem was born, that required the State Department to list the country of origin as Israel on passports and birth certificates if a Jerusalem-born applicant requests it. Typically, President George W. Bush signed the bill but included a signing statement is that he considered this an unconstitutional breech of the president's "power to recognize foreign sovereigns."

Given it's feelings about Israel, I'm sure it's no surprise that the Obama Administration has gone the same way, allowing special 'rules' to be applied to Israel that are not applied to any other area in the world with 'disputed' territory between tow or more nations. For instance, an American born in Taipei, Taiwan can list his country of birth as either China, Taiwan, or The Republic of China (ROC), Taiwan's official name. And to add insult to injury,the State Department permits Arabs born in what is now Israel prior to 1948 the option to have written on their documents that they were born in 'Palestine', a country that didn't exist then and doesn't exist now.

The lower courts refused to actually rule on the suit, claiming that it was a foreign policy issue and an issue of separation of powers between the legislative and executive branch, not of tort law.

But in a victory for the Zivotofskys, the Supreme Court sent it back to the lower courts, stating they can and must rule on this matter of law...by an 8-1 majority.

Do I have to tell anyone that the lone dissenting voice was Justice Breyer, one of three Jews currently on the Court?

Chief Justice John Roberts,who wrote the majority opinion stated: “The courts are fully capable of determining whether this statute may be given effect, or instead must be struck down in light of authority conferred on the executive by the Constitution."

“The federal courts are not being asked to supplant a foreign policy decision of the political branches with the courts’ own unmoored determination of what the United States policy toward Jerusalem should be,” Roberts said. “Instead, Zivotofsky requests that the courts enforce a specific statutory right. To resolve his claim, the judiciary must decide if Zivotofsky’s interpretation of the statute is correct, and whether the statute is constitutional. This is a familiar judicial exercise.”

So the lower court will have to rule on this now.

Given that this is discriminatory, I can't see how the appellate court could rule against them based on the equal protection clause.

Monday, March 26, 2012

DesertXpress, a privately held company linked to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a plan.

They want to build a bullet train that would take tourists from a desolate desert area in California to the gambling resorts of Las Vegas...and they're on the verge of scoring a $4.9 billion loan from the Obama administration to do it.

Here's DesertXPress's idea in a nutshell. Californians from Los Angeles will gas up, drive 100 miles in their cars, pull off I-15, drive to an area outside of Victorville and board a DesertXpress train at around $100 per ticket to go th erest of the way..not counting what DesertXpress will probably charge for parking.

Like Solyndra and the rest of Obama's 'green jobs' agenda, this is simply a nice Chicago-style reward for some well connected Democrats at the expense of the taxpayers, as well as a backscratcher for Senator Reid.

Let's look at the proposition. First of all, the California location they're talking about eliminates any reason to use the new depot. Anyone headed towards Vegas from the greater Los Angeles area who's made the trek before on a weekend or holidays absolutely dreads the heavy I-15 commute. What the brilliant planners of this bit of graft would expect you to believe is that people will endure three quarters of it, get out of their cars and then pay big to take the train the rest of the way.

Right now, there's already bus service run by AmTrack and several other companies from Los Angeles to Vegas. AmTrack claims the trip takes about 6 hours and the fare is $55. Another company offers a trip that takes 5 hours for $25 - $40 each way, with a $10 discount on round trips. Grey hound goes there too. Seniors. a big part of the Las Vegas clientele use these buses all the time, and the casinos frequently offer discount coupons as well to make it even cheaper. And remember...these fares are from Los Angeles, without the Vegas bound visitors having to pay for gas and drive in heavy traffic for three hours from the Los Angeles area to some place in the desert, pay additional money to park their cars and then pay $100 more to go the rest of the way instead of just driving for another hour.

For that matter, air fare from LAX, John Wayne or Burbank airports is usually under $100 round trip, and again, the casinos and hotels frequently offer discounts and packages to make it even less.

DesertXpress and its eager backers in the Obama Administration would have you believe that their potential customers are stupid enough toline up topay through the nose for this 'service.' Instead of flying in comfort for the same price less gas, stress, driver time and parking, or taking a bus for even less without fighting traffic and paying for gas and parking.

And to get it going, they only want the Obama Administration to give them $5 billion in the form of a low interest FRA loan to put this nonsense into operation.Such a deal! At least for them.

Not only that, but the projects official rationale, jobs, is an absolute joke. DesertXPress claims that building the project will generate 80,000 new jobs, but the FRA's own research in conjunction with the loan request shows that this is a wildly inflated number, that most of the jobs created would be temporary, and something like only 700 jobs would be permanent. Meanwhile, towns down the highway would shed jobs. Barstow's mayor calls this 'catastrophic' and estimates they would lose up to 2,300 jobs in his city alone.

The personalities involved are interesting as well.Casino developer and contractor Anthony Marnell II is the major shareholder in DesertXPress, while project consultant Sig Rogich, runs the most influential lobbying and advertising company in Nevada and is co-chair of Republicans for Reid, a Nevada group with ties to the gambling industry. Marnell, another member of Republicans for Reid has donated at least $15,000 to political committees connected to Reid since 2010, including a $5,000 donation in May to Senator Reid's Searchlight Leadership Fund.

Other investors include North Dakota businessman Gary Tharaldson, who donated $10,000 to a Reid committee in March.

And then there's the matter of a recent mysterious issuing of 25,000 shares of stock by DesertXpress HRS Corp.on Marnell's orders.DesertXpress isn't saying whom the shares were issued to, who holds them, and in what amounts.

Same old story. Oh, and as a parting note, there isn't one bullet train in the world operating without a government subsidy. So if this monstrosity ever does get built, the $5 billion is just a down payment.

Sybrina Fulton is seeking marks for the phrases “I Am Trayvon” and “Justice for Trayvon,” according to filings made last week with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In both instances, Fulton, 46, is seeking the trademarks for use on “Digital materials, namely, CDs and DVDs featuring Trayvon Martin,” and other products.

The March 21 USPTO applications, each of which cost $325, were filed by an Orlando, Florida law firm representing Fulton, whose first name is spelled "Sabrina" in the trademark records.

It's good to see that she's overcome her grief so quickly.

It's too bad she didn't also have the foresight to trademark George Zimmerman's image and name. One of the kind of products she undoubtedly would seek to make money on is pictured above and appearing quite a bit in Florida and elsewhere. It doesn't use Trayvon's name of image, but it certainly seems to be linked to the case and uses the phrase she wants trademarked, so she might have a legitimate claim.

Soon to be appearing at a shopping mall near you, along with the Trayvon Martin signature hoodie..your choice of three colors.

Imagine, if you will,the reaction is a white person had put out a tee shirt with the picture of a perpetrator of black-on-white crime with the n-word on it, maybe some of these people. Somehow, I have a feeling it wouldn't be ignored by the media the same way.

Jenna Talackova, the young 23-year-old blonde pictured above was competing in the Miss Universe Canada contest and had actually reached the finals in Vancouver when the contest's organizers found out that "she" was actually a "he' whom had undergone gender transformation surgery.

According to Denis Davila, the national director of Miss Universe Canada, Talackova claimed on her registration form she was born a female.

When Davila became suspicious,(and I'd love to know what gave the game away) he confronted Ms. Talackova and the contestant admitted she was actually born a male. She was booted out of the competition the same day.

"She feels like a real girl and she is a real girl. She didn’t expect people to question it," Davila said in an interview.

"She was hoping we could put her back in the competition, but the rules are very clear and there’s no way we can go back on it."

Talackova says she knew she was a female at the age of four and began hormone therapy ten years later. She surgically changed her gender at age 19, which must have been an interesting change of one's point of view if nothing else.

She just narrowly missed out on winning the International Queen contest in 2010.

Late Friday, when no one was paying attention, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informed Congress that she had issued a national security waiver on US aid to Egypt. So it's official now - Egypt will get its $1.5 million in military aid.

The SCOTUS began hearing arguments on ObamaCare's constitutionality today. The Court plans to hear arguments initially over a three day period.

A great deal of the first day's arguments were taken up by the issue of examining a statute that keeps courts from hearing tax challenges before they go into effect.

The court had asked Washington lawyer Robert A. Long to present the argument that the obscure 19th-century Anti-Injunction Act meant that the anti-ObamaCare lawsuits brought by 26 states and a private business organization were 'premature', in that no one had actually been victimized yet. Long said the court’s precedents showed that the law should prevent these suits going to court until someone actually had to pay a penalty on his or her 2015 income tax returns for not purchasing health insurance.

Long's argument was that “pay first, litigate later” could only be waived by Congress,and the penalties called for in the act should be considered the same as taxes because of the way they are collected...via an income tax penalty.

Interestingly, Long was appointed by the Court to present that legal argument because neither the Obama administration nor the law’s challengers agree with it.

Oddly enough, Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia, who hardly agree on anything concurred that this was sheer bilge.

"Just because the penalty is “being collected in the same manner of a tax doesn’t automatically mean it’s a tax,” said Justice Breyer, “particularly since the purpose of the Anti-Injunction Act is to prevent interference with the revenue stream.” Obviously, the legal challenge doesn't interfere with revenue collection, as Breyer added.

Justice Antonin Scalia agreed, but from the opposite end of the spectrum. He remarked that as a matter of principle the courts should not be deprived of jurisdiction in cases unless the reasoning is very clear. “I find it hard to think this is clear, whatever else it is,” Scalia said.

President Obama's solicitor general, Donald B. Verrilli Jr. also said the case should move forward, saying, “This case presents issues of great moment, and the Anti-Injunction Act does not bar the court’s consideration of those issues.”

He also argued that the penalties in ObamaCare aren't a tax, which is interesting because one of his main defenses for the individual mandate is that it's legal and constitutional because - wait for it - it falls under congress's authority to levy taxes!

Justice Scalia as usual was quick to see the innate hypocrisy: “Today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you will be back and arguing that the penalty is a tax.”

The individual mandate,the vile heart of ObamaCare is scheduled for arguments tomorrow, and as Justice Scalia pointed out, that's exactly the position Verrilli is going to be in.

Where might the Court ultimately go on this?

They could certainly uphold the law as written, ruling that Congress had the power to enact this law, no matter how the public feels about it. This would endorse the continued distortion of the Commerce Clause and uphold the individual mandate as part of Congress’s power to impose taxes. The court would basically be telling the American people that elections have consequences and that the remedy is to vote out the lawmakers if you want an unpopular law repealed.

Another possibility is that the SCOTUS could find the individual mandate unconstitutional and thus overturn the entire law because the statute doesn’t have a “severability clause” — standard language the Democrats somehow forgot to include that says if one part of the law is overturned, the rest of it is still in force.To me, that would be an absolutely hilarious and appropriate finish. As then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said, "You have to read the bill to see what's in it."

That would especially make the Left's heads explode, because it would amount to President Obama's flagship legislation and his first two years with a super majority of Leftist Democrats being an absolute waste of time - because of an elementary omission a first year law student probably could have caught.

More likely than the above, the individual mandate by itself could be declared unconstitutional, which would mean de facto that ObamaCare is history because the law's entire rationale and means of enforcement involves it. The guts would be torn out of it.

Another point of attack that could resonate in the eventual SCOTUS ruling is a point the various lawsuits by the individual states have argued, that Congress exceeded its authority by essentially forcing them to expand their Medicaid programs. It's a a condition of receiving federal Medicaid funds,in common with other programs like federal highway funds, but the states say there's coercion involved because unlike some of the other programs, dropping out of the program isn’t a realistic option.

Of course, the SCOTUS could also simply punt due to the Anti-Injunction Act argument mentioned above, if they decided they'd rather not take this on during what's bound to be a heated election year. I personally doubt they'd do that,but I'm pretty sure at least two justices are leaning that way, and President Obama appointed them both.

An interesting debate, to be sure, and a decision ought to come right in the middle of the 2012 campaign.

President Obama got caught on a hot mic at the end of a 90 minute meeting in Seoul South Korea with out going Russian President Dmitri Medvedev telling him he needs more space on issues like nukes and missile defense...and that after he's re-elected, he'll have more 'flexibility' to do whatever the Russians want. Here's the transcript, courtesy of ABC's Jake Tapper:President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

As Tapper relates, the White House is desperately trying to spin this:When asked to explain what President Obama meant, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes told ABC News that there is room for the U.S. and Russia to reach an accommodation, but “there is a lot of rhetoric around this issue — there always is — in both countries.

If you do, I have a wonderful money making opportunity for you via some friends of mine in Nigeria. Of course, your trust is required....just like it is to believe that this president isn't going to severely impact our ability to defend ourselves.

If the American people re-elect this naive, vengeful charlatan, they will get exactly what they deserve.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

The United States government has paid compensation to the families of each Afghan killed or wounded in the incident in Kandahar attributed to Staff Sergeant Robert Bales:

The United States has paid $50,000 in compensation for each Afghan killed in the shooting spree attributed to a U.S. soldier in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan official and a community elder said Sunday.

The families of the dead received the money Saturday at the governor's office, said Kandahar provincial council member Agha Lalai. Each wounded person received $11,000, Lalai said. Community elder Jan Agha confirmed the same figures.

They were told that the money came from U.S. President Barack Obama, Lalai said.

A U.S. official confirmed that compensation had been paid but declined to discuss exact amounts, saying only that it reflected the devastating nature of the incident. The official spoke anonymously because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

This is disturbing in a number of ways.

First of all, what we've done, essentially, is admitted guilt and paid blood money in accordance with Pashtun tribal custom. And what we've admitted to in their eyes is not one soldier apparently having a breakdown, but what an Afghan commission charged with 'investigating this tragedy came up with - the fantasy that this was a planned U.S. military strike involving 15 to 20 soldiers with air support.

If Sergeant Bales comes to trial and is found not guilty because of PTSD, temporary insanity or some similar cause, just how do you think the Afghans are going to react - since we've already admitted guilt by paying the blood money?

Another point that bothers me intensely...who does President Obama think he is using our money to do this and then taking personal credit for it, as if it came out of his own pocket rather than ours?

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhhood and their salafist allies have warned the military junta against trying to stall the Islamist revolution by not removing the current interim government in favor of an Islamist one of the Brotherhood and the salafist's choosing.

The Brotherhood's official political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has been agitating for the interim civilian government appointed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to be removed immediately since the parliamentary election, which saw the FJP and the even more radical Salafist Al-Nour party win a huge majority

In its statement, the Brotherhood accused the cureent government of being guilty of:

"When we called for the resignation of the government, its head refused, and this was unfortunately supported by the military council," the group said.

"Keeping this government as we approach presidential elections... which raises suspicions over the fairness of these elections, as well as the general decline of affairs, are things we cannot remain silent or patient over," it added.

"If anyone intends to recreate the former corrupt regime with new faces, the people are willing to move in order to revive their revolution and protect their ship from sinking at the hands of people with no sense of responsibility," it said.

What they're essentially doing is warning the generals not to get in the way of what they see as an inevitable takeover of Egypt, subtly reminding them of their strength within the Egyptian military's rank and file and telling them that now is the time to make a deal if they want to remain in the good graces of the coming Islamist regime.

Khomeini did pretty much the same thing to the generals in Iran's military in 1979.

Friday, March 23, 2012

This seems to have become the story of the day. I planned on writing in detail about this, but there are two pieces I'll link to later that pretty much capture my views on the matter, so I'm going to limit myself to writing about a particularly disgusting aspect - the way America's premier race pimps and opportunists have swarmed on this like pigs to a troth.And sadly, the president of the United States has joined them , reversing a previously more balanced stance, perhaps because it's a useful distraction in an election year.

The facts of the case are fairly simple.There was a confrontation of some kind between Treyvon Martin, a black teenager and George Zimmerman, a Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer.

During whatever occurred, Martin was shot and killed by Zimmerman, who had called the police prior to the shooting. Zimmerman claimed that he was in fear of his life and had fired in self defense, which is legal in Florida and a number of other states. Martin was unarmed.

Since the police knew Zimmerman, who had provided them with info on local crime a number of times, they accepted his story after an investigation, which apparently was fairly cursory.

Rather than treating this as the tragedy it is, having it investigated properly and letting the justice system do its work, a number of the usual suspects have smelled a bonanza for themselves and are involved in creating racially based agitation, even to the point of inciting violence.

Al Sharpton, a man responsible for a pogrom in Crown Heights and the murder of several people among his other exploits reveled in heading a rally, where he stopped just short of telling people they had a right to riot over the killing. He'll undoubtedly save that just in case a jury comes up with the 'wrong' verdict for Zimmerman.

Significantly, Jackson also targeted the laws in Florida and other states that give people the right to defend themselves when attacked.

Worst of all in some ways was President Obama, who declared that if he had a son,"it would look like Treyvon Martin" and emphasized the racial aspect of the incident. Aside from the asininity of a president of the United States being clueless enough to be commenting on a pending case, there were a number of other problems with what the president had to say about this tragedy.

Would it have been different, as the president implied, if the dead teenager were white, or Hispanic or Asian? Or does the president see this case through a racial prism, as he has with so many other matters?

As far as I'm concerned, those whom are taking advantage of this tragic incident are guilty of a horrid injustice to us all.

I have sat back and allowed myself time to assess the current episode revealing itself in Sanford, Florida involving the shooting of 17-year-old Treyvon Martin. First of all, if all that has been reported is accurate, the Sanford Police Chief should be relieved of his duties due to what appears to be a mishandling of this shooting in its early stages. The US Navy SEALS identified Osama Bin Laden within hours, while this young man laid on a morgue slab for three days. The shooter, Mr Zimmerman, should have been held in custody and certainly should not be walking free, still having a concealed weapons carry permit. From my reading, it seems this young man was pursued and there was no probable cause to engage him, certainly not pursue and shoot him…against the direction of the 911 responder. Let’s all be appalled at this instance not because of race, but because a young American man has lost his life, seemingly, for no reason. I have signed a letter supporting a DOJ investigation. I am not heading to Sanford to shout and scream, because we need the responsible entities and agencies to handle this situation from this point without media bias or undue political influences. This is an outrage.

3. Most of the time, stories like the one I just linked are not reported by the media, for various reasons. One is that, alas, black on white crime is so common as to be not newsworthy, whereas the reverse is rare and hence, oddly, makes national news.

Another reason is that such stories are, by their nature, inflammatory (no pun intended, of course).

But the media does not mind inflammatory stories when the right people are inflamed. Farrakhan, for example, states that "soon and very soon" the "law of retaliation" "may be applied."

Now, if that story about the black kids setting the white kid on fire -- while declaring "You're white, this is what you deserve" -- was excessively inflammatory, why the media rush to inflame further black on white violence?

4. The cops acted predictably and understandably in not arresting Zimmerman. Here are the facts, as they knew them at the time: Zimmerman was a law-abiding citizen who gave them lots of (correct) tips about local crime. He was helpful to the police (probably also annoying in being too vigilant -- but while such people may annoy the police, they nevertheless appreciate the help that comes with the annoyance).

He called in to 911 to report a "suspicious" character, then followed him, waiting for police to arrive. Eventually there was some violence (Zimmerman was reportedly bloodied) and he claimed self-defense.

Now, under those circumstances, the police are not going to be very suspicious of Zimmerman. If he was attempting a murder, he went about it in a strange way -- calling police to arrive at the scene of the crime before there was a crime. He had no known motive against this Trayvon Martin fellow -- they'd never met.

Why suspect a deliberate murder?

That doesn't make Zimmerman innocent -- but it does explain why the police thought he was likely innocent of wrongdoing.

5. If the facts are as the media reports them, then it does seem like Zimmerman was following around a kid who wasn't doing anything illegal at all. Then again, if the facts were as the media reported them, the Duke Lacrosse Team was guilty of violent gang-rape.

While the liberal media screams, once again, "Trust us, and forget all about our hitting the Panic Button time and time again before!," some of us would like to see what the facts really are before coming to a conclusion.

6. As a general matter, and inescapably, the law of self-defense is a very thorny thicket. The media would like to simplify the law and simply declare that anyone who shoots anyone else is guilty of murder (because they would like to ban all guns, period, and this is a cutesy manner of achieving that goal through the back-door).

But these laws are inescapably thorny and these cases are inescapably very dependent on actual facts.

At the heart of every self-defense case are a pair of related questions: Did the defendant reasonably believe his safety was in jeopardy when he struck the fatal blow? And, based on the circumstances, did the defendant act lawfully, within the accepted safe-harbors for the use of lethal force in defending one's life (or another's life)?

Facts, not ginned up racial outrage or general anti-gun animus, answer these questions.

Given what we think we know (and remember, the media has lied before): it appears that the kid was unarmed, the guy can't rely on self-defense to save his life.

Further, it appears (again, appears) that Zimmerman initiated the contact/confrontation, not the kid, so the "stand your ground" law is not even relevant in the case.

Ace has more to say on the matter at the link, but I think you get the general drift.